Stories
by Solaris Moon
Summary: Folklore in Makoku and on Earth isn't that different... Yuuram pairing


Title: Stories

Summary: Folktales in Makoku aren't that different from those on earth…

Rating: T

Warnings: Language, Yaoi (but if you don't like yaoi, why are you reading KKM fics?), slight fluff

Authoress: Solaris Moon

Blood Type: Don't know, can't get past a headache, back pain, and the occasional need for glasses to de-stress my eyes… I'm getting old, and I'm only 18…

Current BGM: Tightrope (Tetsu69) and various YYH and YNM songs.

Comments: Okay, I have to write something to make up for how crappy I feel, and so I don't have to do housework for a little bit. So this thought just hit me, and it's been revised several times, so you know, so hopefully this is better than using a character I hardly know about (aka Greta). Here goes. Like it, review. Don't, no flames. Constructive criticism only. UPDATE: Typed before I got volume 5 of the DVD. Know a little about Greta now.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own KKM. Seriously. If I did, do you think I'd be worried about how to pay for college? Or how to afford more memory for my laptop? Thought not.

* * *

"Geez… what a time to get pulled here…" Yuri sighed. He had just been studying for a test in English, and gone to get a snack. As he was rinsing off the apple he intended to eat, the water in the sink had pulled its 'drag Yuri off to another world' trick.

Needless to say, Yuri _really_ hated this trick.

Especially when the apple he wanted to eat came falling onto his skull and exploded.

So now not only was he soaked, he had apple goo in his hair and was utterly exhausted from walking. As if to make it even more inconvenient for him, Wolfram, Conrad… hell, no one was around! He'd have been glad for even Gwendal at the moment, to be honest. But no, he had miles to walk to get to the castle. Luckily for him, a white horse rode up, and the blond prince Yuri happened to be engaged to looked down.

"Yuri! When did you…" he asked.

"Just now. Can I get a ride to… wherever? So long as it has water so I can get this gunk out of my hair and clean up…" Yuri sighed. Wolfram helped the boy onto the horse and grimaced.

"Why not try wringing out that jacket and cleaning up?" Wolfram said in disgust. Yuri just grimaced.

"Oh, shut up. It's clean, I was just cleaning an apple off to eat, straight from the tap." He scowled, and they rode in silence until they reached the castle.

-

"Ah! Dry, clean, and well fed! Things are looking up!" Yuri smiled as he sat down at a table, paper and a pen in front of him. Other world or not, he was going to try to study. He'd just write down what he recalled and check it against his notes when he got home. After all, how could a test over English folktales and superstitions be so difficult? As he wrote down common images in tales (something that was supposedly on the test every year according to those in the know), he recalled the image of the gorgeous blond hero on the white horse and the villain in black on the black stallion. Instantly two images jumped to his mind: how he must look to the people, and how Wolfram had looked earlier that afternoon.

Now, Yuri wasn't too worried about the black horse image; he was a well loved Demon King. This world could be so backwards sometimes, but he could live with this. But he wondered at the image of Wolfram; the image could be such a contradiction!

Sure, Wolfram had _looked_ like the stereotypical fairy tale hero, but the way he acted sometimes he was more evil than the witch in Sleeping Beauty! He was quick to toss insults and act superior, but when he wanted, he could be a good guy. And he did have a beautiful face, especially when he was asleep or calm. It was no wonder people fell over themselves to get a look at him, Yuri grinned. Sure, it had been an accidental slap, but he wasn't regretting it a bit anymore. At that moment, the door opened and who should enter but Wolfram?

"Yuri, what are you doing?" he asked. "Conrad was wondering where you were, but that's solved. I'd better go tell him…"

"Wolfram, don't!" Yuri protested. "I'm trying to study for a test back home! It's over folktales, and I don't want to fail."

"All right then." Wolfram said, and pulled a chair out for himself, sitting down. "So what do you know so far? Or what do you have to know?"

"You're going to help me?" Yuri asked. "But everything has to be so different here."

"Not really, Conrad told me several old earth stories when I was younger, so maybe I can help you." Wolfram offered, and Yuri grinned.

"Thanks, Wolfram. First, I have to know Snow White. Basically a girl is so beautiful that her stepmother gets jealous, tries to have her killed. She ends up living with seven dwarves until the stepmother disguises herself as an old lady and gives Snow White an apple that puts her to sleep until she receives true love's first kiss. Handsome prince gives it to her, and they ride off into the sunset, happily ever after." Yuri said, resisting the urge to chew on the end of the quill pen. Wolfram nodded.

"Yes, Conrad told me that one, but there's a version of it here." He smiled. "It's true, there's a beautiful girl involved, but she was common, and a demon to boot. A demon prince sees her, his mother got jealous and ordered her killed. The assassin couldn't follow through, so he just poisoned her enough to knock her out, leaving her on a bed of flowers for the prince to find. He found her, kissed her, and lay down beside her to sleep. When they woke up, his mother had died and he was to become the next demon king. No one knows about this though. It may have just been ruler of a realm at first and some ambitious storyteller decided to make it bigger."

"Huh…" Yuri nodded, making note of this. "Then I have to know about The Little Mermaid. Princess of an undersea kingdom sees a human, saves him and falls in love with him, decides she wants to marry him, but he marries another princess instead. This one has two endings: the Disney one and the actual one."

"Dis...ney?" Wolfram asked.

"Movie studio on earth, but that's not important. The important thing is I need to know both. The Disney ending, she can reclaim her voice and say the princess is the sea witch who took her beautiful voice in the first place, she marries the prince, and all is happy."

"I get the feeling this one doesn't have a happy ending. Conrad never told me this one." The blond prince sighed.

"Oh, it isn't happy at all. She has one night, and her sisters tell her that if she kills the prince she can get her tail back and live on, but she can't bring herself to stab him, so she just sits on the beach until she fades into foam, dead." Yuri sighed. Wolfram looked horrified.

"That's terrible! But… I can understand where she's coming from." He said quietly, eyes downcast.

"Yeah, me too. I wouldn't want to die but I wouldn't kill the one I loved if they were happier with someone else. I'm not that emo." Yuri smiled, and Wolfram scoffed; he knew what emo was, Yuri had already explained that one.

"Yeah, I don't think you have an emo bone in your body." He said. "What else do you have to know?"

"I need to know Sleeping Beauty. Princess is born, cursed by an evil witch after she's given voice and beauty, and her third faerie godmother gives her the gift of surviving the curse. She gets older, and she pricks her finger on a spinning wheel, falls asleep for 100 years until her prince comes charging in and wakes her with a kiss." Yuri sighed.

"Hm… that's like ours." Wolfram nodded. "Only it was the prince who slept and the princess who saved him."

"Girls get a lot of credit here, huh?"

"Not in your world, I see. But here there are women who have folktales about their lives."

"Oh, we have those. Joan of Arc."

"Who?"

"Little girl from France got the call from God to lead an army in a war, when she was done fighting for her country, they repay her by calling her a witch and burning her at the stake." Yuri sighed.

"There's been worse here."

"I know." Yuri sighed; he knew firsthand how human-demon relations could be like the Catholic church to Joan of Arc in the story. He didn't go into detail, though, he could live without pissing Wolfram off. After all, the blond fire starter was helping him immensely.

"We do have a few other stories like more of yours. We have the story of the girl who used a demon stone to go to a ball and meet the prince, who eventually married her." Wolfram counted off.

"Cinderella."

"The beautiful prince who was bought by the other prince in exchange for his elder brother's freedom, and ended up falling in love and marrying the prince. Perfectly ghastly man, too, or so goes the story."

"Beauty and the beast. Also sounds like a manga back home, Gorgeous Carat. Like beauty and the beast, only yaoi and bloodier." Yuri laughed.

"And the sister who was turned into a bear-bee to be guarded by her brother, who ended up having to marry a former temple maiden to save his sister and turn her back."

"Crap… can't remember the name, but there's a story like that on earth too. But it's a brother, the sister marries a prince who slays the witch who put the curse on the brother. Happily ever after and all that." Yuri said. "Thanks, Wolfram. This really helped. I'm just going to finish writing down common elements and I'll go to sleep."

"All right. I'll tell Conrad you're busy right now." Wolfram smiled as he got up and headed for the door.

-

That night, just as they were about to fall asleep, Yuri turned over and nudged Wolfram. "Hey, Wolfram?"

"What is it, wimp? I'm tryin' to sleep…" he moaned.

"I just thought of something… Every fairy tale has a beautiful princess or woman in a horrible situation, and a handsome prince who saves her… usually."

"And they never come true." Wolfram yawned.

"Actually… I think some do. Like when you rode up this afternoon… you looked like a hero… straight from a folktale…" Yuri murmured and fell asleep. Wolfram stayed awake a couple of seconds more, watching the sleeping king, and sighed.

"Me, a hero? Please. If anyone's a hero, it's you…" Wolfram sighed; he didn't intend to tell Yuri he had been looking for a place to stay so he could avoid everyone for a while, at least until he was sure they wouldn't look for him. Of course, what he didn't know was that Yuri would have noticed and definitely would have looked for him when he couldn't find him.

-

It had been a week since Yuri had gone back home, vanishing the next day from the baths back to his kitchen. Wolfram was getting slightly worried until he saw Conrad and Günter walking with Yuri, who was dry and smiling. He must have gotten there a while ago. At the sight of his fiancé, Wolfram grinned softly, and Yuri took his leave of the two men. "Hey, Wolfram. Guess what?"

"What?" Wolfram asked, trying to bite back a smile.

"I made an A on my test, all thanks to your help." Yuri smiled and pulled a plastic bag out of his shirt pocket. "I had a feeling I'd be coming back today, so I was ready. And this is the last part of the test. Just wanted you to read it, if you have time. I have to get out of here, Günter's got a few papers for me to sign. See you at lunch!" Yuri grinned and ran off. Wolfram sighed and allowed himself to smile at the raven-haired king's antics, and opened the bag to remove the folded up paper. As he read it, he blinked in pleasant shock.

_Essay: Create your own fairy tale, must be complete story (beginning, middle, end, plot, setting, characters, crisis and resolution) and correct grammar. (60 points)_

_Once upon a time there was a normal boy, who loved baseball. He worked hard to get into a good high school and thought his life would be simple, cut and dried and normal. One day, in the process of saving a friend from a local group of bullies and hoodlums, he was transported via water to a foreign country, with a new language and new customs, to find that he was the king. He made a mistake the first night he was there by slapping a young woman who had insulted his honor, and in this country slapping someone was a proposal. At first, he was shocked. 'How can I get married this early, I'm only a teen,' he thought, and wished he hadn't made the mistake. Over time, though, he grew used to the idea, even grew to like it and love the beautiful blond woman he had proposed to. She stuck by him, even through all the stupid things he did, all his faux pas, his lack of knowledge of the customs, and the countless times he went back and forth between countries, trying to keep his normal life in his home while balancing being the king of the other. And over time, the blond woman grew to love him, though she never said it. He could tell, though, by the small things she did, like helping him study for tests and teaching him about the foreign land. In time they wed, the country prospered, and they lived happily ever after._

Wolfram sighed at this, and turned it over, intending to refold it when he saw a small note. He wondered at it, and that Yuri had gotten the language of the demon kingdom so easily (in fact, he had translated his story and the question for Wolfram!), and read on.

_Wolfram,_

_Sorry I had to change your gender in this story, I doubt my teacher would have enjoyed it if I had kept the details the same. I can change it later and we can call it a new folktale if you like. Hope you liked it, I wrote it for you. Thanks for helping me._

_Yuri Shibuya_

"Yuri, you baka…" Wolfram smiled as he folded the paper and gently pressed it to his mouth. "I don't want the world hearing this. You wrote it for me, remember? It's going to stay our story…" he laughed, then went to find his fiancé.

* * *

I know that Yuri isn't too great with the Mazoku language but let's just pretend he is for a bit! Or think of it as being later in the series if you like. Well, you know what to do! 


End file.
